Ill 
NEW ENGLAND 
With dreams of the English gardens ever before them, 
our Pilgrim fathers and mothers brought flower and vege- 
table seeds to the new land, and the earliest entries in old 
Plymouth records contain mention of “garden plotes.”* 
John Josselyn, fifty years later, wrote a book called “New 
England Rarities Discovered,” including a list of plants 
originally brought from old England, mentioning those 
suitable or not for this climate, and showing that our an- 
cestors had lost no time in planting not only vegetables for 
the benefit of their bodies but flowers as well for the cheer 
of their souls. 
The New England States naturally have the largest 
representation in this book, owing to the fact that the 
climate of numerous Western and Southern States causes 
many of the inhabitants to find summer homes near the 
North Atlantic seaboard. It is not that the New Eng- 
lander is a more ardent gardener, but rather that ardent 
gardeners from elsewhere are tempted by the soil and 
climate to join the Easterners in creating these flower 
“plotes,” which beautify hundreds of hamlets in this sec- 
* Quoted from “Old Time Gardens,” by Alice Morse Earle. 
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